Share this:

With most other athletes running away from allegations that they used performance-enhancing drugs, disgraced Olympic track star Marion Jones says the best move she ever made was to admit she cheated.

“I have no regrets for doing what I did on October 5th, pleading guilty and admitting to the world that I lied,” she said in an interview aired yesterday on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

“I truly think a person’s character is determined by their admission of their mistakes and beyond that, what they do about it.

“How can I change the lives of people? How can I use my story to change the life of a young person?” she said.

Jones, 32, pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about her use of performance enhancing drugs during the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, where she won three gold and two bronze medals.

She had been repeatedly dogged by the allegations that picked up speed when the head of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative – the lab at the center of steroid scandal that has rocked professional sports – told an interviewer he had given her banned drugs.

But until pleading guilty, she had repeatedly denied using the drugs.

“I made a mistake. I made a choice, at that time, to protect myself, to protect my family,” she told Winfrey. “And now I’ve paid the consequences dearly.”

Jones’ admission came amid sweeping allegations against professional athletes that they used steroids and other drugs.

“I cannot go on anymore with this baggage, lying to the world, lying to God,” she said. “I should absolutely accept responsibility for breaking the law.”

Jones was sentenced to six months in jail and is set to surrender to authorities by March 11. Once one of the most celebrated female athletes in the world, Jones said she had yet to tell her 4-year-old son that she would have to go to prison.

“I put myself in a position to have somebody else determine my immediate future,” she said. “I made that decision. I have to live with it, my family has to live with it. With the grace of God we’ll get through it and come out even better in the end.”

Having to surrender her medals was easy, she said, compared to having to face her family.

“The pain that my family and friends have had to endure,” she said. “Those things to me are what mean the most.”